Alcohol-containing liquids such as spirits and, in particular, wine are traditionally used in cuisine for enriching or producing special foods. Known examples include Burgundy sauce, Riesling sauce or Madeira sauce. Just as in soups and sauces, alcoholic beverages are also used with desserts (e.g. in zabaione or tiramisu).
Both the alcohol and, particularly, the aroma-active constituents of the alcoholic beverages are relatively volatile, and wine and spirits are therefore generally not added to the foods until the end of the preparation. Nevertheless, even in these traditional applications, sometimes quite considerable aroma and flavor losses are unavoidable.
In particular, in the production of dry products, the volatility of the aroma-active constituents represents a great difficulty.
Using wine as an example, these difficulties may be readily demonstrated.
In the case of wine, flavor and aroma are composed in principle of three basic elements. The three elements are: a characteristic bouquet of predominantly highly volatile aroma substances, a likewise characteristic basic taste due to non-volatile constituents and characterized, inter alia, by sugar and organic acids, and finally the alcohol content. The composition of these basic elements determines the type, while their balance determines the quality, of the wine in question. Accordingly, in principle, in a wine powder, these three basic elements should be present not only in a sufficiently high concentration typical of the wine in question, but they should also be present in a balanced ratio which goes to make up high quality.
Retaining the volatile aroma substances during drying is difficult enough, but it is particularly difficult in the presence of a highly volatile constituent, in this case alcohol, which is present in a great excess. This is a considerable reason why wine powders of satisfactory quality have been virtually unavailable to date.
There have been a number of attempts to produce aroma powders from alcohol-containing liquids. Thus, the publications "Alcoholic Powders--Characteristics and Applications", Food Product Development, 11:18 (1977), German Patent Application No. 32 14 321 corresponding to Sato, et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,454,165 entitled "Preparation of Alcohol Containing Powders"; Derwent Abstract of Japanese Patent No. 72 03 93 55; Derwent Abstracts of Japanese Patent Application Nos. 57 09 11 87, 57 08 62 83, 57 13 28 76, 57 12 27 88 and 49 64460; and Sato, et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,786,159 disclose various carriers which have differing effects on individual aroma compounds. However, in these publications, aroma powders are generally proposed which are said to have a particularly high alcohol content. U.S. Pat. No. 4,454,165 proposes as carrier a hydrolyzed starch (maltodextrin), which is dried together with a 1:0.75 mixture of red wine and a 95% strength alcohol. The products described there are suitable, because of the high alcohol content, as beverage powders, preservatives and additives for pharmaceutical products and cosmetic products.
These alcohol-rich powders are less suitable as aroma powders for soups and sauces or desserts, since they have only slight aroma stability and sometimes have a high hygroscopicity. Therefore, they require air-tight packages. In the case of aroma substances for soups, sauces and desserts, it is not necessarily the alcohol content of the aroma powder which is important, the majority of which evaporates during cooking in any case, but, rather, a balanced and characteristic taste and aroma profile.
Economic production, for example, of a wine powder, is also only possible if the alcohol can be recovered as completely as possible. Therefore, the production of an aroma-intensive wine powder includes a very highly selective separation of alcohol and aroma substances. This means, as far as the carrier is concerned: a retention capacity as high as possible for the aroma substances and a low retention capacity for the alcohol.
Although polymeric carbohydrates such as starches and dextrins have been studied in the prior art for their suitability as carriers for aroma powders, such as in Barthelomal, G. B., et al., "Influence of Cellulose and Starch on the Retention of Volatiles During Freeze-Drying of a Liquid Extract of Mushroom", Lebensmittel Wissenschaft und Technik, 8: 174-176 (1975) and "Studies on Mechanisms of Retention of Volatile in Freeze-Dried Food Models: The System PVP-n-Propanol", J. Food Science 38: 671-674 (1973), they have been considered to date as not very suitable for the production of dry aromas. Starch hydrolysates (maltodextrins of different degrees of hydrolysis) have also been previously proposed as carriers for aroma powders, but in this case also only for powders having high alcohol contents, as in DE-A 32 14 321.
In the case of the aroma powders produced in the prior art, it is frequently necessary to add additional aromas afterwards. Also, some processes for the production of aroma powders from alcohol-containing liquids require the use of liquids having a decreased alcohol content. Both these features are unfavorable from the economic aspect and do not give a product having outstanding flavor properties.
More recent highly effective processes for aroma encapsulation (for cold extrusion) are suitable, for example, for the encapsulation of essential oils, but not for the production of wine powders because of the high water and alcohol contents.
An object of the invention is, therefore, to provide an aroma powder, in particular a wine powder, which, when used in foods such as, in particular, soups, sauces and desserts, gives rise to the same flavor impression as the addition of the underlying alcohol-containing liquid.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an aroma powder having as little as possible taste of its own.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an aroma powder that is readily free-flowing and meterable, particularly in the dry form, and is non-hygroscopic, or only slightly hygroscopic.